DealBook Online

By MARK SCOTT, MICHAEL J. de la MERCED and WILLIAM ALDEN

Published: March 22, 2013

BACKTRACKING John W. Peace, below, the chairman of the British bank Standard Chartered, retracted statements on Thursday about the bank’s recent settlement with American authorities over violations of sanctions laws.

Last year, Standard Chartered agreed to a combined $667 million fine as part of a settlement with federal and state authorities, who claimed that Standard Chartered had illegally processed millions of dollars’ worth of transactions for Iranian and Sudanese clients. The bank admitted to “falsifying records” and “making false statements.”

But in a conference call on March 5, Mr. Peace referred to the transactions as “clerical errors.”

In a brief statement on Thursday, he retracted his comments, and reiterated the bank’s responsibility for the criminal activity related to the illegal money transactions. MARK SCOTT

RECOVERY LAG In opening the Corporate Law Institute conference, Mark Shafir, co-head of global mergers and acquisitions at Citigroup, laid out a view of the deal world as still trying to find its feet after the financial crisis.

Many of the factors that should lead to an enormous recovery in deals are in place, he said. But there are enough potential problems that the market is lagging behind where it should be. MICHAEL J. de la MERCED

‘EASY’ BET JPMorgan Chase has been in an uncomfortable spotlight over the last week, after the release of a scathing Senate report related to its multibillion-dollar trading loss last year.

On Thursday, the hedge fund manager on the other side of that bet took an opportunity to reflect.

“That was a fairly easy and obvious trade to do,” said Boaz Weinstein, above, the founder of Saba Capital Management, who was among a group of investors betting against JPMorgan’s trader known as the London Whale. While the trade caused losses of at least $6 billion for JPMorgan, it was enormously profitable for Mr. Weinstein. WILLIAM ALDEN